Bonnaroo Festival Goers Making Accidental 911 Calls With iPhone ‘Crash’ Feature
It sounds like Bonnaroo is off to a raging start, especially if the local police reports are to be taken into account. On Thursday (June 15), the Manchester Police Department put out an alert on social media that they'd been receiving multiple accidental 911 calls all because of a recently added Apple iPhone feature.
That would be Apple's "Crash Detection Mode" feature that was added to Apple's iPhones and Apple Watches just last year. When a severe car crash is detected, the iPhone reads the alert and brings up an Emergency Call slider that users can access. If you're unable to respond, the device automatically calls emergency services after a 20-second delay. And apparently the rapid movement or perhaps physical collisions of some festival goers has registered on some phone sensors as being a potential crash.
The Manchester Police Department said in their statement, "Bonnaroo Guests: MPD has responded to multiple accidental 911 calls at Bonnaroo. It’s likely that these calls are a result of 'Crash Detection Mode,' a new feature on Apple iPhones. Please be mindful and consider deactivating this feature on your phone until Bonnaroo concludes."
Bonnaroo officials then followed with their own posting on social media, asking festival goers to deactivate the feature during the festival, as can be read below.
The Bonnaroo incident isn't the first time something like this has happened, as reports surfaced back in December of the feature misidentifying activities that mirror the speed or impact of a crash, including rollerskating and skiing. That said, there are incidents that have resulted in the saving of lives thanks to the feature.
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So, with a bill that includes Foo Fighters, Paramore, Korn, Knocked Loose, AFI and plenty more, you might want to check your settings before raging any harder. Rock on, Bonnaroo!